In the technical field in question, self-propelled vehicles equipped with buckets for collecting material such as stone or the like, inside which a crushing mechanism is provided for crushing the material collected to the desired size, are known.
Amongst others, an example of a known crushing mechanism comprises two jaws, of which one moves pivotably relative to the other. The jaws are moved in a manner such as to compress between them, and hence to crush, the material which is introduced into the bucket. However, this crushing mechanism leads to some disadvantages which result in poor performance and non-homogeneity in the processing of the material treated. Known buckets therefore have high power consumption and are subject to blockage due to choking with the material introduced.
Stone crushing devices are known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,959,897, U.S. Pat. No. 1,954,288 and DE 580475. The first document discloses an excavating bucket having a vibrating cutter head and a crusher including a pair of jaws that are moved toward one another by an eccentric oscillating shaft. The shaft oscillation is so limited as to produce just an up-and-down movement of the jaws.